The last post was already a long time ago … Meanwhile we have been here for 6 weeks – that is the entire summer vacation and thus the longest that we have been away from home so far – and we will leave this great place in one Week.

A lot has happened in the last four weeks. Even if many days are the same, there are some stories to tell and pictures to show.

When I last posted, the children were still sick. Unfortunately, that lasted for another week, which is why we took care of the two of them for a total of two weeks and weren’t able to leave the farm for a while. We made the best of it, went for a walk with the more or less enthusiastic children in the handcart and continued to practice our Swedish. Nevertheless, we were happy when Kayden and Zoey went back to kindergarten and we could devote ourselves to other activities.

Among other things, we tried our hands at being a farrier.

One of the advantages of Jenny’s job is that she can shoe her horses by herself. So she could offer us to remove Mille, a fairly relaxed horse, the horseshoes. That was hard work! While trying to loosen the nails of the shoe with a heavy iron bar, you have to hold the horse’s hoof at the same time. We each tried to take of one of the shoes and it probably took us as long as Jenny did when she shoed a whole horse. This was also noticed by Mille, who became more and more restless over time. But: we both made it and Jenny had a lot of fun watching us.

We were less successful, when we tryed to take a horse for a walk … Blixten is a young stallion who is still untrained in riding, but still needs a lot of exercise. So our plan was to go to the lake with him and let him eat there while we would go swimming again. Unfortunately, we did the plan without the horse. After a few meters in the forest, Blixten didn’t feel like moving forward anymore. We tried really hard, but in the end we had to admit that we are not good horse whisperers.

2-minutes Job that took 2 hours …

Yes, it is actually possible. The credits for this go to Lina, who had received a task from Wictor the evening before. One morning we found ourselves in the paddock and shoveled earth from the middle of a pile to the respective ends. And the best thing about it was: this pile of earth had been built by Wictor with his excavator the day before. So we shoveled earth for two hours and wondered if Wictor hates us or if we’d done him something. After two hours, of course, the work wasn’t completely done. It just takes time to move a 1m high and 10m wide mound of earth … In the evening we told Wictor that we had been working on his task for two hours. But instead of a praise we only got a very puzzled look. It turned out that the real task had been to move the wooden pillars of the entrance to the paddock so that a transporter could unload stones there the next day – a task that Wictor and I completed in less than two minutes.

Wednesday, October 13th – Excursion to the reallife Amazon shop

On Wednesday we accompanied Jenny to one of her customers, about 1.5 hours away from her farm. Since she only had to cut the hooves of two ponies there, we finished around noon and drove to the superstore Gekås Ullared in Ullared. The size of this store is indescribable, just the fact that there are over 60 checkouts is amazing. You can buy anything here, especially cheaply. There is everything from clothing to household items, furniture and groceries.

In any case, this shop is so big that most of the people go there for a day trip. Some also stay overnight in the hotel, which was built for this shop. There is even a TV program of its own that accompanies people with their shopping there. Lina and I found out, how exhausting such shops are. Still, it was very interesting to have been there.

Friday, October 15 – Finally breaking the fast!

On October 15th the time had finally come! We had survived our two-week fast. Since this was also Wictor’s birthday, it meant for us that we were only at home with Jenny’s sister, who was babysitting, the children in the evenings. On Thursday we had already prepared chocolate fruits and our mothers had provided us with enough food in two packages, which mainly contained warm clothing and equipment for Kiruna. Thanks for that again :)! So after we had collected leaves all day, mowed the lawn a second time and almost destroyed the lawn mower (but now we know that you can only tip a petrol engine in a certain direction …), we madeour beds comfortable and watched Gossip Girl. Then it occurred to us that Baseball still needed food. Since I was too lazy to change again, I went to get the horse from the paddock at about 6 ° C in my sleeping clothes:

Tuesday, October 19 and Wednesday, October 20 – the house is filling up

Since October 20th we are now 5 volunteers here. Helen came from France on Tuesday and Emma and Siena from Great Britain. A big advantage for us is that we no longer have to muck out the horse boxes by ourselves. In addition, we now have three crazy people with whom we regularly jump into the cold lake – even once at night!

We also noticed how well we have settled in here. You’d think we’ve already become part of the family. Kayden and Zoey are especially dear to our hearts and it’s hard to believe, but it’s nice to get up with them in the morning and prepare their breakfast. We also get along great with Wictor and Jenny.

How is it going on now?

Since I have been asked this question a few times, here are our approximate plans for the next few months: Despite the fact that we get along with everybody here very well, we are very much looking forward to leave on November 8th for our new adventure. We want to continue our trip to Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, and spend 10 days there at Camp Alta. After that we want to go back home via Stockholm, where we are planning on November 25th. to arrive. We will spend December and January separately, as Lina will work at home and I will be in Ramsau (Austria) for it. We don’t have any concrete plans yet.

Then that was it again :). We hope you are all doing well and we look forward to seeing you again soon! You can now find more pictures under „Gallery“.

Hey då!